1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention is data processing, or, more specifically, methods, apparatus, and products for administering a time-shifting cache in a media playback device.
2. Description of Related Art
The development of the EDVAC computer system of 1948 is often cited as the beginning of the computer era. Since that time, computer systems have evolved into extremely complicated devices. Today's computers are much more sophisticated than early systems such as the EDVAC. Computer systems typically include a combination of hardware and software components, application programs, operating systems, processors, buses, memory, input/output devices, and so on. As advances in semiconductor processing and computer architecture push the performance of the computer higher and higher, more sophisticated computer software has evolved to take advantage of the higher performance of the hardware, resulting in computer systems today that are much more powerful than just a few years ago.
Computers today are often incorporated in various devices found in the home as well as the office including devices that playback digital media content, such as, for example, televisions, digital video recorders, digital cable set-top-boxes, portable satellite radio players, and the like. Such devices may be used to playback content of digital media streams, such as satellite television, satellite radio, digital cable, and the like. Such devices may also be configured to store such streamed content in a time-shifting cache, a buffer of recently received digital media content, accessible by a user for playback. A user may rewind, pause, or fast forward playback of cached content all while the media device continues to cache current content. In some devices the time-shifting cache is limited to a particular size, while in other devices the only limitation of size of the time-shifting cache is the size of the storage medium upon which the cache is stored. As the size of the cache increases, less room is available for more current information and more processing overhead is required to navigate playback within the cache. In many cases the digital media content that is stored in the time-shifting cache includes many of uninteresting, or non-essential, content with respect to a user's primary interest in playing back the content. Commercials, silent portions of a radio broadcast, musical interludes between news programs, and the like are portions of cached content which occupies space in a time-shifting cache of limited size and increases processing overhead to navigate playback of the cached material.